Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Sleeping

It has been way too long since I posted! For the past two nights, we have been working on Molly's sleeping. Back in November she was sleeping through the night really regularly. Since then, however, she has not been sleeping well. With Christmas travel, teething, and illness, we did not really think there was too much we could do about it. A week or so ago, I kind of started to reach a breaking point. I was constantly way too tired, and it was starting to affect my mood. (Those of you who know me well know that, at least before Molly was born, I really needed a lot of sleep. Since she has been born, I have been surprised at how little I can get by on, but the cumulative effect was starting to catch up with me.) Anyway, I talked to one of the other mommas in my group because she mentioned in passing that her daughter sleeps through the night, but it was a bit of a struggle to get her there. I remembered her saying this, and it made me realize that there is in fact something that we can actively do, rather than just passively wait for this phase to pass (most kindergartners sleep through the night, so I figured it would eventually pass, right?). She gave me a book by Richard Ferber, which has helped tremendously. He explained in the book what we were doing wrong. Letting Molly fall asleep on me, and then sneaking her into bed resulted in Molly's being startled when she awoke in the middle of the night because things were not as they were when she went to sleep. That is, she fell asleep cozy in her momma's arms, but she woke up alone in her crib. Understandably, that would result in some anxiety and difficulty getting back to sleep. So we have tried putting her down in her crib while she is still awake, and then letting her cry in increasing intervals until she falls asleep. I let her cry for three minutes on Monday night before I went in to reassure her that she was safe and that I was close by. Then I let her cry for five minutes and went in again. I was going to wait 7 minutes to go in again, but she fell asleep after five minutes. Dr. Ferber recommends that parents do this same thing when the baby wakes up in the middle of the night--no nursing as I have been doing. She only woke up once Monday night, and I only had to go in to comfort her two times, as I did when she went down for the night. Last night, we did the same thing, but instead of starting at three minutes, we started at five minutes. After five minutes, Bill went in to comfort her briefly, and then came out. Again, we were going to wait seven minutes, but she was asleep after about five minutes. The same thing was repeated around 1AM when she woke up, and Bill only had to go in one time to comfort her before she fell asleep again. Around 4AM she woke up again, but she got herself back to sleep, and we did not have to go in at all. Hopefully, the progress will continue, and she will be sleeping well through the night very soon. One interesting thing is that Molly Zelda has been sleeping on her belly now, for the first time. She gets on all fours as she is crying/whining, and she just kind of ends up on her belly. She seems to just prefer sleeping that way now.

We had a nice Easter. It was pretty low-key, but the best part of all was that I got to talk to Kelly for a little while. Yay! I miss her. She sounds good, though. We had dinner with our neighbors, which was delicious and fun as always.

Oh! and Molly has been saying mamamama and papapapa and bapa a lot. It's really cute. She says mamama when she is crying, and she will also reach for me a little bit so I am convinced that she knows what she's saying. Am I crazy? Maybe, but it makes me happy to think that she is calling for me. :)